MUSE LAB

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2010

LAB #5: Mania, Depression, Equanimity

Tonight was a delight. My body was ready and energized... prepared to work. I think part of the success of the night also was in 1. the choice of a highly charged/scarey and very personal trinity (depression, equanimity, mania) 2. a foundation ritual of impersonal no-form

Sequence: 1. Self Guided warm up by moving in relationship to space as a quality. 2. Walking warm-up - personal walk, following/accentuating imbalances, 3. vertical source jog 4. impersonal no-form group foundation 5. warm-up and personal trinity work 6. east side passes - first there and back through the trinity, searching for actions and gestures that were quintiscential to the source. - second pass with the realm of the muses above and in relationship to the trinity sources. 7. final two rituals: space split in two, one half is the trinity all together, and the other half is the realm of the muses, guidance was to find a sequence or dance of the trinity and then carry it into the muses realm to see what happens. second pass was just walking the grounds and allowing smaller, more subtle impact.

In the closing circle I reported that I had picked a highly charged personal polarity and made friends with it by the end of the night. I also noticed that when those energies were engaged as sources they became empowered and more friendly... rather than something to be resisted. to consider depression as a source of energy was quite interesting. Also, in relationship to the muses each source was given a Purpose and a reason larger than myself... it was given almost archtypal Meaning and Value. It was extraordinary.

I also noted that 'structure' arose often for me in the realm of equanimity. and one of the structures that emerged was things like formalized prostrations, mantras, memorized prayers, group memorized traditional ritual forms in a sort of tribal way, etc. it was quite a relief to feel that in comparrison to the scattered lighting storm of 'mania' when related to the muses.

I recall images from the final rituals... especially the feeling of lasoing the moon. the muse as the moon loved to be lassooed and caught by me, then when I passed to the other realm, back into my personal trinity, it was nice to feel how much I enjoyed lassoing the moon. it was a very positive partnership.

everything was transformed for me tonight. last week I was asked by the must to sacrifice my notion of wanting kids in order to recieve it's power... this week that movement came up again, but when I dropped the child, it died but a thousand more were born, they were raining down around me. I got a sense of all the abundance that came my way when I became willing to surrender even just a little bit of what I thought was so limited and precious.

That's good for now. I'm going to have to work towards some metrics for these sessions. or some basic touchstones so that I can make sure to touch certain bases each time I journal about my session.

Spontaneous Moments Energy Drain/Energy Explosion Personal Trinity: 6 gestures six gestures that emerged: Doubt: holding my ground-stiffness, rigidity of body, narrow stance, locked joints Doubt: slicing: doubt being about cutting things down, testing things. Wishing: became the fascination of shopping in a huge department store, like a willy wonka wonderland of shopping Comittment: became ... shoot, I don't recall. I think I burned something down, burned down a tower and then rushed into the flames. oh, that's right. first I took a step... it was the commitment of a well measured step. and the pleasure, the ecstacy of the foot planting on the ground and having achieved a well discerened and committed step. on the return... Commitment: burrying my head in the sand like an ostrich. blinders on. I didn't want to see or hear anything but what I'd decided. wishing: huge amounts of head in my hands, rubbing them together rapidly, very very fast. faster than I ever have... then slapping my palm and pointing to it like a magician. wishing became the energy of Magic on stage. the power of the hands to work towards the creation of an energetic spectacle. doubt: became the squirming thumb movement. a childish mocking. it was the energy of mocking or sarcasm or the childish ability to tear things down, tear down whatever stands up and makes a statement or positive attempt. It was the doubt cruel childish mockery.

Denial at the Door: Self is Not Wanted I just noticed that my 'dance' dream movement ritual was very tired... very full of 'self' also, and so didn't work well when I entered the realm of the must. it was rigid and unusable at some level for them. also, it was so selfish that they just kicked me out of their realm. they eventually accepted a revised version of the movements, but still, it was a very simple and very low energy experience of orbiting around the must, keeping my eyes open, and using my thumb not to tell someone off but to keep my aim clear and straight and in relation to the light of the muse as my guide.

Questions: am I moving quickly through the space because I'm not allowing for a more unknown exploration or because my nervous system is working quicker... do I get through stuff because information comes in and crystalizes quickly?

Lab #7: Death, Suicide, and Transition

Okay... the deeply personal nature of this work continues. ouch.

to the right are some quick notes I made and an image or logo that came from a few of my gestures:

Tonight's Sequence: 1. move and relate to space as a quality- basic warm up 2. same as above, with the added invocation of the presence or absence of the muse 3. exit the room: enter as a group to the 'call of the muse' and move into personal warm up spaces. 4. warm up: and right into personal trinity: (mine was death, suicide, transition) 5. east to west trinity passes: looking for essential movements/gestures 6. east to west trinity dance integration as we approach muse on west wall and return 7. no form corridor polarity: absence and preseence of muse with 'dance movement' forms distilled from the trinity and east west passes 8. same as 7: but now with or without 'forms'. forms used 'as needed' 9. temple of the muses/ impersonal no-form final ritual

learning at each stage: 1. lots of energy and presence, freshness and spontaneity in form during warm up. 2. pressence and abscenece of muse was like being plugged in or not. I was still moving, but absence was like running on batteries vs. being plugged in. also far more inovation and 'inspiration' when working with the presence. this notion of 'inspiration' comes back later... with breath being a powerful expression of hte pressence of the muse. 3. call of the muse group foundation: this was hard because I'm not sure I heard the instructions properly. the chaotic personal life causes racing thoughts and leaves me in a difficult possition in terms of hearing instructions in lab sometimes. I thought it was about setting the whole space as the 'call of the muse' as a group foundation. and I trusted that hte group was invoking the energy and all I had to do was enter and submit my body to what was 'there', rather than know in my head. the result was strong. I found my hand in a gesture of the number three. three keeps coming up, a trinity of muses for some reason and today it also manifested as the three channels of the energetic body, right, left channels and the central channel... these were somehow separate muses from the 'divine couple' that has been present as well. 4. warm up is getting stronger. the activation of the core is hard... it is immobilized in me often. then into the personal trinity. death was sudden, always a moment. death was a recapitulation of all the ways I'd died... and noticing there are only really a limited number of ways to die. it is not an endless array... somehow I got that the rest falls into the realm of transition, not death. also, death was bodily death only, the breaking of the container, or the melt down of the vehicle. suicide was ... suicide was intentional... I don't recall the personal work. so much as the distillation work. I do recall that the 'wandering' technique has been useful in the personal polarities... just to move quickly between the three, wandering back and forth, without letting the responses get huge... i can move through many impulses and pieces of information quickly. 5. gesture work and actions was clear: death: rising up energy... way out the top of my head, closing my eyes and pressing my energy out and up to inifinite. second action was 'death' archtype... turned into the sythe motion. very very calm and spacious... and very gently cutting off a head, my head: but I was death and James was over there. third action: the touch of death... very gentle, but was touching my body, killing things off within my energetic body, lumps of decaying energy and ideas and 'self' fell to the ground as I touched james' energy body, death had a closed eyed rotation, spacious, droning... like the sound of the planet orbiting like a great big spaciousness. suicide: I stepped into the body in front of me... then suicide was ... I still don't recall this one on the first pass... eventually, after riding a balloon in 'transition' and being along for a fun ride, in suicide I tried to grab another balloon rather than go along for the ride and got torn in half bodily... it was a willful act, full of dis/ease and conscious choice of splitting myself rather than following the float of transition. transition was a realm of doors in all directions... like if indras net turned into an orbe of hallways and doors. once I stepped through one door I was in a new realm, but also full of direction and choice and passageways. 6. I got a little lost here... didn't hear the instructions again. 7. this one was good but not as good as 8 8. strongest part here was getting slammed in 'abscence of muse' pinned to the floor breathless. I could not breath at all. I had to get out to breath. in presence I was full of pleasurable breath. also, muse turned suicide into the willful act of self exposure for the sake of art... for the sake of another. to decide to sacrifice myself in service of another. suicide became 'self' death or ego death to be born into Service. 9. temple of the muses was hard for me. the impersonal no-form was like a dry wind, blowing me around. the temple seemed overcrowded and polluted by people misuing it. but it did bring us together. we almost or did touch and some of the touch of death started getting put to use on other bodies... killing of pockets of leaching energy and slaughtering them as I passed through.

the Muses are more and more, messengers, intermidiaries of pure spirit... they are guides and directors but in a seductress way... drawing me, playing with me, singing to me, ravaging me, breathing me, etc.

I am feeling like they are present whenever invoked. that they are my breath in some ways... moving through all three channels.

more to come...

Lab #8: Child, Parent, God Trinity

I am being forced to be more and more personal in these journals or I won't get much out of them.

I have been very distracted in the work because of the intensity of the emotional states happening for me outside the work. I am dealing with mental health issues; mania and depression, extreme anxiety and suicidal ideation, loss of a relationship, financial ruin, career failure or at least impasse, hospitalization, addiction, and perhaps medication. it is an intense and terrible time in those regards. I often spend many hours on free support lines just to get through the day. I don't feel that way this morning. I had a nice coffee with a friend in the morning and ate a bit of good food so I feel okay ... and have a jump on some work... so cooking right along.

anyway, one of the major issues I've been grappling with in terms of addiction and psychological maturation is the process of separating myself from my parents and re-parenting myself. and of course my relationship to the divine has been severely effected by my parents.

for example, last night as I traveled through my personal trinity I discovered that my idea of a higher power became embodied as a drunken Santa Clause... laughing, stumbling, pretending to be jolly but really being very cruel and twisted. he threw gifts at kids and screamed at them to be happy. he laughed and drank. it was disgusting and what I realized was that I have an understanding of God as a fantasy like Santa... as make believe. as a fairy tale to make people feel better. a kids story. this is a common and understandable thing, but to encounter it in the lab means it has a strong personal psychic 'reality' for me... and in many ways I was seeing how my 'father' energy from the parent domain was affecting my understanding of the Divine, of God.

The next thing I recall sharply was the experience of walking in and out of my parents experiences as them. that was striking. the first few passes I was mostly working with personal material and had not yet graduate to archtypal energies of any kind... or essence. I was in Vietnam as my dad, I was witnessing my abusive grandfather as my mom in shock, I was my dad raging in his room by himself every time we as his kids woke him up with our loud talk and laughing... when he had to go to work in the morning. all this travel in their shoes was very good for me I think. Not that I condone or agree with their choices, but it isn't my job to agree with their choices. my job as an adult is perhaps just to understand and work honestly towards compassion and forgiveness without lying about what I'm really feeling.

Whew... writing about this is making me sleepy! that happens sometimes when I approach delicate emotional material.

Okay, what else. I remember looking around for a hug as a kid. no one really around.

The best pass was when Antero suggested we pass through the three parts of the trinity but focus on 'body as unit' or full embodiment of the sources we were working with. at this time, I found more essential movements, (pregnant walking and caressing my belly, several working gestures of a father- connected to other men he is sweating and working with )

This appearance of 'other' people in the experiences was one of the most remarkable parts of adding the muses and letting the "God' part of my trinity to weave through parent and child. in the visions and embodiments I was relating to other people, almost always I think.

the other part that was the most powerful was the 'song' I found in the God part of my trinity when working with full embodiment essence. it was given to the parents, it was carried into the parents... then the parents became what they were to be... sourced in the divine they were able to perform all their sacred, archetypal, roles and tasks and to actually parent... the largest role of which seemed to be to pass along the 'song'. as the song was passed along the child sang it gently and simply almost absentmindedly while playing on the ground with toys, it the infant body and safe space of youth. it was a beautiful vision and one I've been seeking within myself and my life for a very long time. I talk about it as an 'it' or 'them' a bit because i know I was working with energies bigger than me, but they are also within me. also, the purpose of the no-form before and after all rituals is to clear out the vehicle... to make room for energies to enter and to misidentify at the end. for now though, I think it's good to find room and a relationship to each of these qualities and let the energy of the three function and align in my being and in my daily life. God willing I'll sing that song, do my duties joyfully, and pass it along as we go.

James (my new teaching website... www.actawake.com)

Lab #8: Child, Parent, God Trinity

I am being forced to be more and more personal in these journals or I won't get much out of them.

I have been very distracted in the work because of the intensity of the emotional states happening for me outside the work. I am dealing with mental health issues; mania and depression, extreme anxiety and suicidal ideation, loss of a relationship, financial ruin, career failure or at least impasse, hospitalization, addiction, and perhaps medication. it is an intense and terrible time in those regards. I often spend many hours on free support lines just to get through the day. I don't feel that way this morning. I had a nice coffee with a friend in the morning and ate a bit of good food so I feel okay ... and have a jump on some work... so cooking right along.

anyway, one of the major issues I've been grappling with in terms of addiction and psychological maturation is the process of separating myself from my parents and re-parenting myself. and of course my relationship to the divine has been severely effected by my parents.

for example, last night as I traveled through my personal trinity I discovered that my idea of a higher power became embodied as a drunken Santa Clause... laughing, stumbling, pretending to be jolly but really being very cruel and twisted. he threw gifts at kids and screamed at them to be happy. he laughed and drank. it was disgusting and what I realized was that I have an understanding of God as a fantasy like Santa... as make believe. as a fairy tale to make people feel better. a kids story. this is a common and understandable thing, but to encounter it in the lab means it has a strong personal psychic 'reality' for me... and in many ways I was seeing how my 'father' energy from the parent domain was affecting my understanding of the Divine, of God.

The next thing I recall sharply was the experience of walking in and out of my parents experiences as them. that was striking. the first few passes I was mostly working with personal material and had not yet graduate to archtypal energies of any kind... or essence. I was in Vietnam as my dad, I was witnessing my abusive grandfather as my mom in shock, I was my dad raging in his room by himself every time we as his kids woke him up with our loud talk and laughing... when he had to go to work in the morning. all this travel in their shoes was very good for me I think. Not that I condone or agree with their choices, but it isn't my job to agree with their choices. my job as an adult is perhaps just to understand and work honestly towards compassion and forgiveness without lying about what I'm really feeling.

Whew... writing about this is making me sleepy! that happens sometimes when I approach delicate emotional material.

Okay, what else. I remember looking around for a hug as a kid. no one really around.

The best pass was when Antero suggested we pass through the three parts of the trinity but focus on 'body as unit' or full embodiment of the sources we were working with. at this time, I found more essential movements, (pregnant walking and caressing my belly, several working gestures of a father- connected to other men he is sweating and working with )

This appearance of 'other' people in the experiences was one of the most remarkable parts of adding the muses and letting the "God' part of my trinity to weave through parent and child. in the visions and embodiments I was relating to other people, almost always I think.

the other part that was the most powerful was the 'song' I found in the God part of my trinity when working with full embodiment essence. it was given to the parents, it was carried into the parents... then the parents became what they were to be... sourced in the divine they were able to perform all their sacred, archetypal, roles and tasks and to actually parent... the largest role of which seemed to be to pass along the 'song'. as the song was passed along the child sang it gently and simply almost absentmindedly while playing on the ground with toys, it the infant body and safe space of youth. it was a beautiful vision and one I've been seeking within myself and my life for a very long time. I talk about it as an 'it' or 'them' a bit because i know I was working with energies bigger than me, but they are also within me. also, the purpose of the no-form before and after all rituals is to clear out the vehicle... to make room for energies to enter and to misidentify at the end. for now though, I think it's good to find room and a relationship to each of these qualities and let the energy of the three function and align in my being and in my daily life. God willing I'll sing that song, do my duties joyfully, and pass it along as we go.

James (my new teaching website... www.actawake.com)

Lab #9: Absence

I was not at Lab #9 due to working as an actor with the Magic Theater. Fun. Antero said that they worked with the source of 'genius' rather than 'muse' as a change of pace. I can imagine that being quite interesting...

James

Lab #10: Psychically FUBAR

Can't remember a thing from tonight. I was tired and so psychically FUBAR that I was falling asleep most of the time. I'm loosing more and more memory capacity due perhaps to advanced mental illness in direct proportion to my inability to stay Present. It's strange that I can be so lucid about my own dysfunction sometimes. I'm blacking out and so can't recall anything, because I was never there to begin with. some kind of major dark night of the soul is at work here... I can feel that among the composting, that divine seeds are being planted, but I am being broken down precisely by Love somehow. the deeper my devotion, or stated devotion to Divine life the more that my pretenses and false assumptions are being demolished. it feels like death and the psyche naturally falls into crisis... but in my better moments, when I let the old self decompose, I know that something more real, more True... something that is bigger than me and something more capable of service is being born. the panic and the insanity is the last gasping breaths of a dying self.

(next morning)

here is my best memory.

Sequence: Warm up: relationship to space, movements as a relationship to space rather than to one's self. let movements communicate with the space, be in conversation with the space. body as unit and 'sustaining care': in sustaining care of course I found my love for certain people, specifically my ex-grilfriend very strongly. that is a sustaining care. something that fuels me to care for myself and care for 'life' in general... to heal, to be kind, to work towards wholeness and sustainability.

Re-Enter Realm of Muses from No From: with the added notion of sustaining care. this took me to the floor. I pressed the my back into the floor again and again... creating sensation in my chest and three dimensionality in my chest... the back of my heart. and as I put pressure there, my heart was stimulated, my chest came alive... and I toned and sang from my chest over and over. the sustaining care of the muse was to sing from my heart.

Warm Up: very tired. somewhat cliche' movements through the whole thing. but generally the bottom four vertebrae (where sexuality and anger have been trapped in me for a long time) have finally started to mobilize and come to life. that... the spinal work is getting more supel. in stillness my mind is not still. I fall asleep or subtle adventures (dreams and thoughts) carry me away often... (partially due to a high stress emotional day.) - heat cycle, it felt like the group was sort of (flat) in terms of heat... but that seems partially due to 'sustaining care' foundation of the night. as a result movements are less 'volcanic' in the characteristic way of newbies to the work. the movements were gentle, more patient, more subtle and soft as a result of sustaining care as an embodiment.

warm ups: trinity: again working with dark shadow forces. I waited for a trinity to present itself... I ended up with addiction, panic, and delusion. what a trinity. powerful forces. I was worried that they would be all negative but I was looking for some 'wisdom force' within their apparently dark energy. it moved quickly but panic sometimes led to 'sleep' which was interesting. addiction pinned me to the floor at times. delusion was putting horse blinders on at times. at times it was celebrating and greeting people with joy and and upbeat mood. the way that I try to present a 'together' happy front to people when in fact I am falling to pieces. denial and dilussion being close bed fellows.

four sides of the room: trinity work... quick transitions and bridges between the four aspects (trinity plus no form)... jogging through each.

thee space ritual: personal energy, dead zone, realm of the muses

then again with sustaining care was it?

finally walking the three realms and not only sourcing 'memory' but making 'remembering' an activity... an action in itself. this brought up a lot of uncomfortable but relieving memories. when memories are reclaimed and integrated into the fabric of the story, something feels more whole. something comes back together... especially for someone like me that is struggling with 'delusion and denial' as a source of memory loss. black outs literally as a way for my psyche to avoid what it can not 'integrate' or tolerate or accept.

I don't recall much of these last few rituals.

sitting in silence and reverence with a two others in the group. being upside down fish... flippers in the air. locomoting on my shoulders, traveling in a shoulder stand... like a sea crawling sea anemone or something. being animated like that despite my powerful physical depletion on a personal level.

There is nothing egoically consoling about Truth.

James

Lab #11: Resources: Head, Heart, & Gut

Sequence:1. prep: relating to space as we enter…2. foundation source: Resource3. warm up4. personal trinity: head, heart, gut5. east to west passes: working with trinity in relation to the muse and ‘sustaining care’ as a notion.6. north to south passes: integration of the trinity to realm of the muses.

There were other smaller steps and variations in there but that’s what I came up with in terms of recall.…

I recall most strongly that I had little in the way of visions. most of my experience, because I was sourcing actual body locations, ended up being full of primarily physical experience. I have an impression that sometimes more physical embodied experience is a good sign. Sometimes I think the vision and the mental pictures are a distraction, an escape. To leave the body and ascend into the subtle realms, leaving the body behind. If I remember correctly I’ve heard that men have that tendency (which makes sense) and that women have the tendency to do the opposite (stay in the body and not have visions).

Resource as a foundation was probably the best part of the evening. As I began one foundation source jog I recall cycling through past experiences, people/guides, skills I’d acquired in the past that can serve me now or at least remind me that I have the ability to go from zero to mastery given time. This was vital to my work at this point. I was falling apart from too much shadow work, too much deep diving of dark matter in my life. I needed to call on what strength I had to carry me through the rest of the lab.

Resource as a foundation was also a lovely combination the head, heart, and gut. each became a powerful resource… literally a source of power. Each is like a power plant pumping energy up and down the system. In relation to these sources was where I found the most physical information… the connections and team work that the three centers perform.

One image that stuck out as I dropped into the ‘gut’ on one of the west-east passes… I went right to the ground like a push up; there was a pumping sexual motion and the invigoration of the belly through vigorous pumping and pushups. Then my body bent up in an up dog type of yoga pose, but I had a distinct sense of being a horn… a majestic powerful large horn. like my whole body was the horn of Valhalla. being blown from the feet. This was actually the beginning of the group moment I speak about in the next paragraph. It was a strong sense of the power of the gut/pelvis to push a massive ‘call’ to the world, through the cascading hills and the whole world. It was clear that my pelvis was actually going to fuel the Song of the Muses (of Love and Life and awakening…as I see them) across the whole world. It needed the groin if it was going to be loud enough to carry to to break through. I felt as if it were the call to the group, like the bells summoning the monks to vigils, and then the whole group began the song of the muse warrior march…

It was a remarkable moment of group activity … which happens on occasion… on the second pass of east-west work the group traveled almost lock step across the room. each person working autonomously but still coming together almost perfectly. the time it took to get across the space was perfectly synchronized and the whole line was in the song of the muses together, although each were also in their own world.

One strong part of working so deeply in the body was that I wasn’t able to make much ‘story’ or ‘sense’ of what was happening to me. Especially in the last two rituals… my conceptual mind wasn’t able to string together meaning. Usually as I move through the ritual I can, at some point, get a sense of what a movement is ‘about’. I went through many movements that didn’t crystallize in that way, in my ‘knowing’. This could be two things… one is that it is yet beyond my ‘mental models’ and thus is outside my minds realm of ‘making sense’ or ‘understanding’ in a particularly mental way of matching to what I already know. or it could be the difference between action and activity. perhaps I was disconnected and just wandering about… just being physically active without actually being in touch with any source of energy that I could gnow.

I guess in general I didn’t feel much connection the muses or at least I wasn’t surprised by the connection. It didn’t feel foreign or new or different… as if I’m almost acclimated to the presence of the muse right now and so when I enter the realm it doesn’t have a lightening affect… it doesn’t shock me or knock me to the ground or electrify me.

tonight is another approach to those beautiful beings… the specters of inspiration. those lovers of the unknown and out of control. those gift giving nymphs. the grace bestowing playmates. those childish sprites of spirit. Divine ticklishness and the rapture of ecstatic gnosis are their realm. I’ll see you there.

Lab #12: Gnosis: Warrior, Lover, What?

Sequence:1.) enter and relate to space 2.) non-directional jog 3.) foundation source group ritual 4.) personal warm-up sequence 5.) personal trinity 6.) foundation source jog 7.) enter the realm of the muses 8.) west-east passes w/ sustaining care: looking for the essence of what we care about in each of the three parts of the personal trinity 8.) realm of the muses again: triangle in the middle – with emphasis on sustaining care in relation to the muse 9.) impersonal no-form bath

The best parts of the evening had to do with working with sustaining care in the personal trinity. It was very clear work. In the warrior…in slow motion I was vigilant, then met my opponent eye to eye – a beast, then calmly watched it lung in a way that I could score the kill, in the lover I luxuriated and just enjoyed the company of women. The third in my personal trinity was kept changing. At first it was the Magician, then The Priest, then it became The Saint, then the Sage, then by the time I got to the last few rituals, my persona trinity didn’t have enough power to sustain the work. It dropped out it seems. With the saint there was a veil of righteousness… like a protective coat and an ability to look down on people and stand Very tall; large. With the Sage the sustaining care became the opportunity to dive into the darkness within… to fight the beast in my own body rather than the external beast of the warrior. The warrior in the second pass became the sustaining care of the company of brotherhood, of a team or warriors, well trained and working together to conquer obstacles; both physically and visually I was at the center of a football team.

By the time we got to the realm of the muses we continued to work with sustaining care. I stepped out of no-form and a baby boy was born out of my heart. I nursed him and held him. Then I was pulled; carried him like Abraham to the temple of the muses and asked to leave him inside the door. I was heartbroken, but the muses were asking me to sacrifice, to give what I cared about the most. then one by one I traveled to each of the gateways of the temple (the candles and pillars) where I sent all the energy I contained in my head, heart, and gut. once those three centers were empty, I was like a dry leaf, an empty paper bag. lifeless to my ‘self’ . then I was backed into the temple so the ghost of the muse/genius could enter me from behind. I experienced the muse like that… like the specter of genius, hoping in and out of my body and into the bodies of others throughout the night. that gave me a sense of lack of ownership and the fickle quality of the autonomous power of the muse.

i did begin the night with the foundation source of gnosis… which to me has to do with direct knowing. I was interested in what I gnew directly… i wanted a night of only what I personally gnew (my word for knowing that is particularly from Gnosis)… not stuff I had borrowed or read somewhere. anyway, when I began with that source it was all in my head, so I had to make it about the pelvic gnosis. which is kind of a good title for a book. Pelvic Gnosis. I wanted to know what my pelvis gnew. It was fruitful but often unclear as it is a different language down there.

I have become interested in what is happening among the group. IE- cataloguing what I am hearing from others during the circle or what I sense in them during the work or within the group. This may be important when I get to the point of doing some 2nd person focused questions towards the end of this process. I’ve been asking myself questions like, what did I hear from others in the circle? Can I bring my notebook to the circle with me so that I can capture phrases or impressions of who they are, how they work, and what guesses I have about the group dynamics? How is the group connection? IE- jokes afterwards and sharing kind eyes on the way in.

Lab #13: Spine; Left, Right, Center

Worked tonight with the Spine as a Foundation Source and Left, Right, Center as the Personal Trinity.

We worked in relation to the realm of the Muses but also worked specifically with Angels/Demons, Ritual Discovery, East/West Approaches, etc.

The most remarkable was the zenith of evening. Myself and one other lab participant stayed in the Demons side. I was the Lord of the Realm, fully embodied, quiet joyfully, ecstatically. He was my minion, like a hound or pet, but human. He said later that energetically I was gnawing on his neck, that he was offering it to me.

The scariest part was that he was like me. He was helping me play out a psychic dynamic I have with the Devil. One of offering myself, of being a minion. I know that I have pledged allegiance, sworn against God to ride certain patterns of mine right to the gates of hell and self annihilation… and that I know it will kill me but I somehow rejoice in that fact. This is a true and real part of my psyche. Will it ever not terrify me? Is it literal? Is there really such an autonomous energy to submit to, to be influenced by? I’m not sure.

The Totem Pole:As I worked on the second pass to the realm of the muse, I approached naked of any formed ritual, but still retained the flavor of my previous work. Now the right and left were more than masculine and feminine energies… and the center did seem to be front to back undulations; ripples. but now as I approached the left and right produced animals of many varieties… and many qualities. As I approached the muse, they began to stack up the spine in the middle, until I was a totem pole of real animal qualities, and yet also a man, stacked full of animal qualities. I walked backwards away from the Muse, full of the integration of all those movements. Very strange. My arms were very wide, my steps were small but precise and indirect. My chest and spine held forward and open in a new way.

Could it be that totem poles have a anatomical significance the way a crucifix has data relevant to the body itself. Looks an awful lot like a field of crucifixion in the above picture.

More on this lab later perhaps… but starting a new show tomorrow so it’s time for me to get some sleep, get up early, pack, and drive to the theater in Sacramento.

The strongest impressions of the night were the notions of past, present, and future. Bodily the past was almost always some kind of active suffering. The Present was some sort of death or transformation; at times beheading, at times dismemberment. The future was primarily a cloud of unknowing. It was sometimes about traveling backwards (as unseeing faith) and sometimes about floating in impersonal no-form and being guided by the ‘flow’ of the soup of impersonal no-form, which I have come to see as an bodily experience of what I think people call the Tao.

This struck me because past was always “mistake or suffering” present was always “transformational moment" or '”time of great change” and future was always some version of “faith” or “blind trust” but with the added quality of “surrender” into “blissful guidance”. I am strongly aware that these qualities didn’t have to do with the perhaps archtypal aspects of these three energies (although perhaps they are) but more to do with the given circumstances of my life as it is now. I don’t think I got beyond the personal in that regard. I can sometimes feel when I move beyond personal material into something transpersonal or impersonal…but that was not where I went with past,present, and future tonight. Even my experience of ‘sacred’ was very mundane and personal. I simply attended gently to my throat and voice; because I had been straining it in rehearsal and it is absolutely sacred and necessary for my survival for the next 7 weeks of work and for my career. My voice is like gold. it is my livelihood and my art, and thus highly sacred to me.)

The last impression I am left with is regarding my interactions with others people. I had a few moments that my energy was drawn to a sense of ‘interaction’. nothing forced, just a feeling that my attention and energy suddenly included another, usually a very specific ‘other’, and usually only for a very specific period of time. I could sense that perhaps the others weren’t ready for it or open to the reality of the moment of connection within the ritual space; and that’s okay. I’ve felt that way at times and interaction in ritual is a dicey prospect; verticality has be to quite strong in each individual to handle it and the two I ended up connecting with seemed a bit shaky (dramatically caught in their own process and thus perhaps not vertically stable enough to connect) at the time. That is the story I make up; the judgment/evaluation I have about the situation. They may not agree. I will say that consistently, when I am in the Muse realm, something sacred and of ‘higher’ meaning is infused into whatever personal energies I’m working with… and it often becomes some kind of service to others, or becomes a larger function in relationship to ‘others’ as a sacred Thou.

Two motions I performed on others… a dramatic and spinning beheading of one participant in the muses section which I later learned was a big part of her overall work that night… of dropping her thinking, offering her head to the muses. I was an instrument for them to lop her head off. Beheading is gory. when I searched images of beheadings… really terrible stuff came up. videos. I didn’t look but tried ‘sacred beheadings’ instead. This image is pretty close to what I we enacted in terms of physical posture… except that the beheading was not of a haloed head, but of one that was clunking around. I was thinking of what kind of state does someone have to be in to ‘behead’ someone… is it projection of their own egoic headtrip? are the ones wielding the axe the ones that actually need to lose their 'heads’ metaphorically? loose their ego fixated minds, full of rage, anger, and enemy images? not sure… just questions.

notes for future work:

consider returning to highly charged trinities or attempting adjustments to refine one if a single part isn’t quite right yet.

stay in the bodily experience. Follow the body slowly into movement developments. turn away from the mind that wants to concoct or decide ahead or time or even just too quickly what it is that I’m experiencing. see if I can let myself ‘not know’ longer. deepen no-form.

Lab #15: Annoyance; Warrior, Chief, Elder

This was an interesting trinity, it was mine and it wasn’t mine. It came from my direct experience and had the sense of past life residue, but also came directly from ongoing encounters I’m having with the land here in the north bay of san Francisco. Culturally it was not mine. The last people to truly commune with the land here, near Mt. Tam were the native aboriginals who were moved out by a body dissociated modern and predominantly white race. This land I live on is not my land. I am a foreigner. Mt. Tam gave me that trinity yesterday when i went on a ritual hike there.

Sequence:

1. Space Relations

2. Somatic Questions: Why are you here? Where are you going? Who are you now?

6. Personal Trinity: Warrior, Chief, Elder – all of which seemed to me a continuum of masculine initiation, but turned out quite different.

7. East – West Passes: body as unit, and discovering attributes of the sources.

8. south – north passes: self, sacrifice, muses – two rituals. first had a large zone of sacrifice, the second just a gateway of sacrifice between the two. there was another difference but I can’t recall now.

I feel some sadness and confusion this morning as I recap the experiences. I’m concerned that so much of the experience gets lost. I miss boat loads of information due to a scattered mind or inoperable life circumstances that make me forget or black out pretty soon after or even during the experiences. leaving me just sort of half numbed out. I don’t experience my foggy headedness nearly half so much elsewhere in my life as a I do in lab.

Last night the group talked about how having no idea what is happening or even what happened is often a very very good sign and the result of going deeper than preconceived or intellectual ideas about the sources we’re working with. I’m concerned that is not the case with me. I think perhaps sometimes I don’t know what’s happening because I’m just fogged out, spacey, and elsewhere.

So what were the most striking discoveries?

somatic question, I realized I was there because I was avoiding going to an insane asylum. that was scary to see, but I recalled that the beginning of this lab I was fighting to stabilize enough to stay out of psychiatric hospital and so staying in lab was a high motivation to regulate… to follow through on a commitment. Who am I now, who do I want to be? I recall the guide of the “White Man” … an energetic not racial being, stood within me, stood me tall, and large over the land. walked through that land. a feeling of wanting to stand tall, a man, full of light, purified of aberrations of spirit.

Trinity work is getting stronger: I move quickly from one to the other sometimes, like the ‘walking the grounds’ exercise. it gives me an influx of information and also helps me sort down through layers rather quickly, when I give myself the possibility of cycling through quickly (like the four sided source jog we did a few weeks back) I find that my system can respond and crystallize rather quickly.

Elder was not just and old chief. to the contrary, elder was man and woman. elder was just villager, commoner who had lived a long time. Chief ended up being a vary rare energy. not just a grown up warrior although it may have been a warrior at one time.

The muses are what this lab is all about… approaching an understanding of what these actually are. what this force actually is. I feel like I am still sorting thought layer upon layer of my own mental constructs and inherited cultural IDEAS about the muses. I hear other lab participants sharing stuff that sounds very direct… but then many of them are veterans of many years of paratheatre work. This is encouraging in some ways, for me to continue to excavate and demand direct knowledge through experience and to pursue the Reality of James through direct contact with these forces, unmediated.

I had an experience of the muses as ‘aberrated’ in some way… like invention and creation that is disconnected from the earth. I was an Indian warrior in modern times, drunk at a carnival, surrounded by plastic balloons and play guns, totally at a loss to feel connected to my warrior nature. just polluted by frivolity. I couldn’t tell if the muses were fucking with me. IE – generating worlds of chaos and pop culture just to force a lightening up. but mostly it felt like muse relations disconnected from the earth, from the gut. like inventions of an inspired but disembodied mind. the chief too was at a loss. stuck in a cubicle somewhere. useless in his nature. In the muse realm… there was the moment of dying as the elder. I realized that ‘dying’ was actually one of my functions as an Elder. Then when I went into the muse realm I realized that how I died was actually and quite literally breathing life into the ones that were caring for me as I died. that transfer of spirit, wisdom, and life force was one of the strong forces I found in the muse. consistently the realm of the muse expands the function or activities I find in other source experiences and puts them to use for a great whole. Consistently personal suffering or experience becomes a source of service for all beings.

In the the east-west passes, on the return trip, I found the chiefs essence quite large… he was breathing the whole village. Literally keeping his attention on their collective breath and he became the whole earth. had to breath the earth. I ended up in a sitting posture like a mountain, and just toned for the whole earth. the interesting thing is that when I toned as the earth, when I took responsibility for the whole, the riches of the whole were opened up to me.

Sacrifice: warrior sacrificed much to go to battle, but gained the magic of drinking blood, of the life force of the kill, etc. the power and initiation of the kill, of life and death. of returning having faced death most directly, of having proved oneself in the face of death. of having not backed down but been victorious. returning to the village covered in blood, strutting and powerful, in the glory of warriorship. but also sacrificed were friends. I watched friends, brothers falling around me. toppling. I sacrificed my innocence when I cut a throat of a fellow man; knowing full well the sacred nature of my opponent. not forgetting that. The Chief lost his whole body. his life was not his own. he was dismembered, the body just exploded into tiny pieces. nothing remained of his personal will and life. he was given entirely to breathing and living for the village, feeling the tribe with vigilance and absolute service.

A Note on Foundation Sources: annoyance: I chose this spontaneously. I attempt to find sources and polarities and trinities that I think will hold a charge for an entire night of work. Something very full of energy for me. I also try to let them emerge from the moment while waiting to enter the rituals. I do very little preparation in terms of thinking about what to work with before arriving. Often what I come up with before the actual moment before I enter is too heady. So I wait in no-form and kind of sort through to see what emerges in my mind. This time there was an annoying sound in the environment. A high pitched squeal of machinery.

I had thought to source Hara that night, but decided to go with the spontaneous and synchronistic instead… and annoyance seemed a challenge…

I’ve become interested in accessing things I have an aversion to as a source of energy. like sourcing ‘resistance’ rather than rejecting it or fighting it. finding out the purpose and power and energy available in resistance. So, annoyance did actually give way to sources of energy… at times it gave way to precision (because noticing subtle things that didn’t anger but just annoyed lead to more precise action to amend it.) sometimes it gave way to the power of anger to initiate change, sometimes it gave way to increased concentration and commitment… IE- if an annoyance is something I’m powerless over and is distracting me from my purpose I can actually use it to increase the depth of my commitment and the power of my mind to focus attention and persevere.

that’s it for now. =-)

James

Lab #16: Christ in my Crotch

That’s just a clever title but it kind of is what this night became about largely. the culminating image was of a Christmas tree that went deep into the earth, a enormous cone shape that enveloped the planet but culminated in my crotch. it was met by a tourch, dropped from above… through what would be my third eye, (at one point it only dropped to my throat so my head and shoulders and the whole realm above was aflame, but then it dropped lower and lit the star at the pelvis… okay this might be out there, but it was as if the sun, the light from above had lit the earth on fire, and that Christ had been a star child, that we are all that or we call could be lit by the same fire. the hands I had were erupting fire into the entire realm… okay, I just took a break from writing to draw like 6 images, visions I’ve had during this lab and previously. I will scan them and include them in this blog, hopefully get a friend to draw them.

presence actions are always nice. I am relating to them in terms of just very simply, what gets me into the room more. what actions commit me to the moment I’m in, the room I’m in, this very moment. a wandering mind I suppose to some degree is inevitable, but in the head of experience, the truth is that wandering mind is gone, there is experiential absorption in the action at hand. not that there is anything wrong with the thinking faculty, it just takes its proper size, shape, and utility in full bodied action.

foundation source of relation to muse: I felt wide awake. wide open eyes in no-form. I felt the space like a big brick of light, a glow. I’ve never felt the ‘invocation’ of a space quite so palpably. it felt good to go in there and relate… easy to relate and not try to become the energy (which seems to have been the point of the wording) … the muses (maybe this was later) kind of danced in and out of me. I would move and they would pass through with an impulse, move me, and the … it was like a fly by. inhabiting for a second then moving on, giggling a bit. it felt a bit like the soup I’ve felt in impersonal no form… but it had more character, more quality than that soupy tao of energy.

stillness of the warm up was far more upright and awake as a result of the foundation source for some reason.

personal trinity work was nice but I recall mostly the sustaining care of the trinity work… I passed through twice and got six very clear messages. lateral, I found the right and left very different… the right like pressure, liked to be constrained. I ended up lying on my right side, squishing the right side while the left side was free and could flow. this related for me to my masculine and femine sides. that the masculine loves the pressure of constraint, to flex its muscles and feel alive through resistance. the feminine side, left, like to flow and feel free and open; a liquid life.

in dorsal… I found a crawl that again turned into a wolf… a sniffing wolf… I felt my front to back differntly as a wolf. my nose and ass… and realized I was looking for food. nose led to mouth… (right above the mouth no less. =-) ) and I realized I could move towards what I liked, forward, what smelled good and away from what was toxic behind me… leaving it behind literally. also, even when i stood and became a biped, the mouth and ass were still front to back, even though they were also top to bottom. also noticed that later, with a porcupine image… of having my back protected by spikes… how good that felt to have protection back there. (I later learned left to right turned into turning. the ability to circle and spin which was a kind of way of keeping front always front. not being vulnerable behind where I could not sense or manipulate experience with my hands.) anyway… what else.

then I stood and the vertical sustaining care I felt a small tourch (later to become the HUGE muse touch) dropped into my forhead. (FYI – I have been having blemish breakouts around my third eye this whole lab. I sometimes connect physical symptoms to energetic processes.) and again this morning, bigger than shit… a bloody red spot on my forehead right between the eyes? coincidence? hmmm.

anyway, the torch at this point dropped into my third eye and into my throat. so that inspiration from above, the fire that lit my voice was important. and my head at that point apparently.

on the second pass vertical was all in my legs. I had legs like the pan character I’d been possessed by earlier in the lab. strong, bent, and deep into the pelvis. so I realized what I cared about right now deeply was drawing on the power of the depth of the earth via my legs. one by one I engaged muscles and made adjustments in my legs, feet, ankles, pelvis, hara, etc… to be able to feel and draw on the earth through my legs.

frontal dorsal on the second pass became a beam of light through time… forward and backward through time… it was a beam through my heart, but it had to do with sending love or extending love into the past and future.

lateral the last time was about choice, of about not knowing for some reason. I could look side to side, left to right… it felt as if front to back was like being on one track… but side felt like I could look at other paths, I could side step, I could look around and choose another direction. make turns. so not being stuck, having choices felt important. I could pathalogize that as inability to commit, but it also seems to serve other very useful and real functions. I just want to explore wisdom with regards to side stepping and when to put horse blinders on.

north south passes: I felt this strength and clarity as soon as I dropped into my personal energy. I clasped hands at my heart, I made decisive moves that had a beginning middle and end. I used strength and integrity in my whole body. nothing moving if I did not move it with the complete impulse. as I ventured into the realm of the muse to relate, I was intact. the plumbing could handle the water pressure. that was when I moved slowly into the layers of the image I described right at the beginning. all else I recall was this feeling ongoing of the size of the cone that went into the earth. my belly keeps coming up in relationship to the earth… a pregnant giant belly. This sensation was even stronger when working with the energetic body… I could feel it was huge and had nothing to do with how my physical body was moving. my belly was the planet, it was the round top of a mountain but reached all the way down and around Gaia. I was a mother, giving birth… and my legs were in consequential to the cone/tree energy around me. I felt enormous and sturdy.

that’s all for now. her are the images…

James

Three Strange Angels

The Song of a Man Who Has Come Through(by D.H. Lawrence)

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me! A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time. If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me! If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift! If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed By the fine, fine wind that takes its course though the chaos of the world Like a fine, and exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted; If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge Driven by invisible blows, The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides.

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul, I would be a good fountain, a good well-head, Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

What is the knocking? What is the knocking at the door in the night? It's somebody wants to do us harm.

That was it. Pretty straightforward structure… this is a bit of a short digestive process.

Experience… of moons inertia, of suns overwhelming direct contact of it’s heat and force/energy, of the complexity on earth. also contact with the alchemical creative relationship between those forces… as if earth is a child of the two. as if the heat of the sun, the direct force of energy and creation is cooled by the moon’s energy… the dead inertia or solidified form that is the moon. the earth is caught in between… in between the cooling silver of the moon and the hot liquid gold of inspiration of life force. the relationship between the three and the times of the month was vital too… gave me a sense of when the muses liked to work and how they liked to work in the cooling and heating phases of creative manifestation. My foundation source was animal… so I had a phoenix at some points… at some points I had peacocks, elephants, etc… it was really wonderful to experience those animals in my body as sources of energy, not as movement ‘studies’ like I would have in a bad movement class in acting school.

I think this work has helped me clarify… that my essential work as an acting teacher… as a movement teacher for actors is to tune, sensitize, evolve and deepen the instruments with which actors play. our body, voice, and being are what we play… they are the instruments we use and bring to the work… my work as an acting teacher is essentially to create circumstances where by those instruments can become like a Stradivarius violin… these finely build, finely tuned, deeply resonant, richly complex and whole human beings that can bring wisdom, presence, heart, passion, darkness, and mostly wholeness to what they play… to resonant a body and being that is shocking and revelatory to audiences… that seems a worthy goal. A charismatic, awake, present embodied being… human and divine… attempting to dive deeply into life the way William Blake and Carl Jung and Dante Alegeri and Michelangelo did… true visions, shocking revelations, emerging from deep within, with authenticity and force, rocking the world open and alive. this kind of work can actualize that kind of Power and Gnowledge. I believe that’s possible…

Lab #18﻿: Muse Lab; Wound, Healing, Scar/Rebirth or Transformation

Lab #19: Sacred: Warrior, Lover, Thief …

because of working on a show that plays during the day in Sacramento, I have been driving an hour and a half starting at at 11:00 at night to get back to my apartment after the LAB sessions. Because of this and the fact that I get up directly the next day and perform one or two shows leaves my mind and body little time to return to the keyboard and record my experiences. after a short time there is little impulse to return and attempt to recapture the events. the energy has gone, dispersed and new life events are afoot. I write only to say that tonight is the final lab session. I do look forward to what comes of it.

I have allowed myself to go into this lab with a ‘not-knowing’. I have a love with these forces. It felt like a ten week courtship of dating process between two beings that had always loved each other, and will always love each other just de facto, as a confession of their own essences. I am built to receive them. My vessel completes their impulse.

I’m curious about the ‘relationships’. If I have much say in it. If I have to tolerate some of their careless behavior with vessels like me. If I have to stand up for myself or be careful how I choose my muse consort. that sort of thing…

Tonight I have no idea what will emerge.

God help me. James

Final Notes: and Temporary Ending to an Eternal Relationship

Sequence:enter space: Space relations.

2.) access resistance as source, then add back 3.) foundation source: verticality 4.) warm up cycle 5.) personal trinity: started as ocean, mountain, sky became liquid, solid, vapor/gas… in later rituals 6.) transition/heat/foundation source jog 7.) triangle work. pathways between trinity sources with muse source in the middle of triangle 8.) repeat as above but focusing on approaching the muse from a variety of entry points along the triangle. 9.) North/South Pass with Gateway. south was designated the creation or construction of the self and the north was the realm of the muses but with the intention of maintaining the self in that space.

I’m really not sure I can put this stuff into words.

my experience was that I went higher and deeper than I ever have with the verticality. I went up to the heat of the sun above and down to the heat at the core of the earth. the fire in them both. this was in response to my trinity… ocean, mountain, sky that became earth, water, wind and also solid, liquid, vapor… and as a result I was looking for the fire. the verticality was the fire it turned out in this case.

I found the moon as a cooling source from direct contact with these heat sources, especially above… the icarus bit about flying to close to the sun, there is heat and inspiration in that light, the source of life. but it seems natural to need to cool with the moon and night… to temper the other elements and to use that heat to forge vessels… using water, earth, and air in alchemical processes with heat always being the catalyst. something like that…

I also learned that I could store energy in resistance… as I moved towards the solid gateway, from the heat of the muse source, I realized that resistance was actually stored energy. that it could be used to store energy. for what I’m not sure, but the idea of resistance as storage was interesting and brand new notion.

also there was group connection around a strange sense in the last ritual of mundane qualities. as if the muses were revealing themselves in daily life, in mundane tasks of the creation of life… even basic self-care rituals and basic actions that support and lead to larger creative leaps. also there was a sense I think of ‘just so’ that everything was right, that the fire of inspiration was well tempered by the mundane world, and that to fly to close to the sun is actually not great. that life as it is, the bodies we have, are the spirit incarnate, are inspiration in form. …

there was just a sense of well being at the end. of ease. the whole last ritual for me was about simple tasks of self care and self sustaining tasks. eating, opening doors, washing, etc. then when I went to the realm of the muses it was clearly like a house of worship. their realm was like a church of some kind, a place to come and worship. I also had a notion or experience of making a helmet. but it was like making artifacts… spiritual artifacts. forms to ‘hold’ or ‘carry’ the energy of spirit. making it solid, capturing the energy in ‘resistance’ of form. that kind of thing. but many of the actions in that final space were about ritual actions, (communion, hymns, tithing) etc that were like the mundane and tempered contact with spirit that actually maintained the the self I had created earlier in the ritual. it was a way of making contact with spirit that was mediated so as not to rupture this vessel that is James and the form that is James’ life when all is going fairly stably. so that felt good, this notion of titrated contact with pure spirit so as not to blow James to smithereens through contact. oh, communion was earth (body), liquid (blood), and the air/sky part of the trinity turned out to be song… carrying sound waves on the air, it was hymn. so my trinity returned in religious rites.

There was some mention of the notion of ‘reactivity’ in the process … in working with the sources. I’m not sure what that’s about.

just like the first day’s arrival of the muses, the departure of from the space felt strong. like a goodbye or a finishing of a process. I recall the first day when we invited them in… the floated like little orbs of light, little light beings skipping around the upper part of the room. when we finished our final ritual on Thursday night, all of us standing in no-form, they lifted and departed the space. I was a taking wing sort of feel, an ascension perhaps.

That’s all for this lab. I am humbled and feel a bit sad tonight, saddened perhaps mostly by my own hubris and offense in relation to the sacred that I got in contact with through the muse. I bow to you all who may read this at any time.